Remember to integrate your website navigation
Posted by Mark White, Blog Consultant in Business Blog design , Business Blogging FAQs , Corporate Blogging
When companies are looking to incorporate a blog as part of their online marketing then this will involve either integrating the blog into their current website or setting up a separate site using a separate domain name. (More thoughts here on this point)
If the blog and its focus is likely to be complementary to the rest of the website, then the sensible choice will be to integrate the blog into the site itself, ideally at a graphic and functional level. You’ll also want to make sure that the blog reflects your site’s navigation and menu as far as possible while offering the information and connection opportunities that we are, I hope, familiar with by now.
However, what I have seen on numerous occasions is that while the blog is there and complete with links back into the other pages of the website, it does not appear in the main menu of the site. Indeed sometimes, there is no link to it anywhere on the site!
What a waste!
- Great Marketing: Firstly, it is perhaps the cheapest and easiest form of marketing that you have access to for your blog. The visitors to your website form part of your target market and are already likely to be familiar with your company products. The blog should help to enhance that and help to open the dialogue with them so help them find it, wherever they are on your site.
- Have Confidence: it also demonstrates either a lack of thought or a lack of confidence in what the company is doing – if you have spent time in planning your blog (Green Cross Code and then answering the 3 KEY questions especially) and writing it, then have the courage of your convictions, put it out there and link to it! If you don’t think it’s good enough to display your name then re-think your blog, don’t just hide it.
- Consistency: users of websites tend not to like surprises, therefore not knowing that there is a blog but not being able to find it easily will prove highly frustrating for them and result in people leaving the site. Not good for the desired “stickiness” element that most sites look for and that blogs can really help with.
So remember, if you have a blog that you want to work for you, whether it’s for marketing and PR purposes, as part of your customer service or just as an expert information resource, make sure that the links from the rest of your site are visible and strong. It’ll help your readers find you and that will then help you in return.
Tags: Blog Development, Blog Integration, Blog Marketing, Creating Corporate Blogs, Website Navigation
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May 2nd, 2007 at 10:20 am
I’ve found a great widget you can put anywhere on your website so people can subscribe to your RSS feed. Previously (to my knowledge) it was a bit tricky providing an RSS feed button outside of your blog software. The widget can be found at addthis.com and they also provide a plugin for adding a menu of social bookmarks to every post.
If you would like to see an example, I’ve used it on every page on my website next to ‘Latest News’. I also list every post so people can see what I’ve written and subscribe from any page: thewritewords.me.uk.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:38 am
Hi Matt, Thanks for that. Looks like a nice widget, but I think that since the RSS feed is just an XML page, you can just link to that from any image that you place on your site and it will work. Personally I go through Feedburner and point the image link at my feed page there. The blog’s looking really good, by the way – many congrats!!
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:16 pm
The problem I found with the feedburner page was that for somebody unfamiliar with RSS it only gives you limited options of which aggregator to use – or am I missing something? I found with addthis.com you just had more options.
The Crucible is going very well thanks. Up to 160 subscribers, its helped develop my branding, pushed my main site up Google and is filling up my contacts book. I hate to think what my traffic and marketing would have been like without it.